Long-Distance Family Photo

(Joni) My family traditionally takes a large group photo every Christmas, but this year we're in Turkey and my family is in two different US states, so that makes taking a photo together rather difficult. However, my sister ran across this cute idea on Pinterest, and she tweaked the idea to work for us. So we made letters to spell out the word FAMILY, and we took different photos to fit, then patched them together into what turned out to be an ADORABLE group photo! (Click to enlarge.)

F-Us
A-Our son, Elias
M-My parents
I-My nephew
L-My other nephew
Y-My sister and her family

A really funny thing about this photo is that my sister and her family live in Georgia, so it was 70 degrees (F) the day they took their photos... They were sweating in their long sleeves! On the other hand, it was absolutely freezing in Ankara when we took ours - we stripped off our hats and coats just to quickly snap our photos before putting them back on! In fact, the morning after we took ours, we woke up to a layer of snow!

But it was fun to be able to collaborate on this "family photo" together, and it helps me still feel connected to them even from far away.